Exploring with no great agenda can leave you nicely open to chance events and encounters.
Innocently, and somewhat aimlessly, crossing the first of two major roads near the south west corner of the Kremlin, my focus on the traffic and the next few metres is broken:
“Mister... Mister!” I turn around to see a young besuited local hailing me. “You can't cross there.” Apparently the second road had no way to cross, so I let the man lead me in a 'U' of 3 crossings to get to the other side. Sergey, 23, was interested to hear that I was just exploring, with no particular target destination or activity, so he set about giving me some suggestions as to where to go and what to do, before deciding to join me as he'd finished his friday half day of work. Some art galleries are in the direction we're headed and I let him chose his favourite gallery, in preference to some of the better known general classical or modern ones, dedicated to Nicholas Roerich, a Russian artist who travelled extensively in the East, many of the places I was heading to in fact – serendipitous!? Many of his pictures were landscape and the colour palette, shapes and compositions had been simplified to great effect, with luminous, almost cartoony, effect. Most looked like they could have been picked out of a feature film colour key storyboard. The exhibition was great and I would never have gone were it not for my chance encounter with Sergey. Here he is outside the entrance to the gallery.
We then headed over to the nearby Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.
Apparently it was entirely reconstructed recently – completed in 2000, while the original, completed in 1860, was dynamited by one of Stalin's cronies. They were going to build a massive monument to socialism known as the Palace of the Soviets, but due to funding issues and flooding problems, Khrushchev instead turned it into the world's largest open air swimming pool! How's that for a change of plans!? Quite the enthusiastic and cultured local historian, Sergey also pointed out how the paintings inside were modern - you could tell by the nature of the faces – they were too sophisticated to have been painted at the time when the building was supposed to be from... I'm embarressed to say that I wouldn't have thought enough about what I was looking at to have noticed... Once he'd pointed it out though, it seemed very obvious.
The view from a nearby bridge up the Moskva River to the Kremlin.
Sergey generously continued to be my guide for the rest of the afternoon – giving me tips for the Kremlin & an art gallery tomorrow and showing me round Red Square and St Basils' Cathedral which was great. He also introduced me to the faintly alcoholic, 'not-quite-beer', Russian soft drink Kvass which is not bad.
After we've parted, I can't help grinning to myself at the randomness of it all. Hopefully I'll continue to have chance encounters and guidance of this kind throughout my travels.
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